Driesh and Mayar from Glen Doll

Driesh is 947m and Mayar 928m, by the figures Walkhighlands gives, and they stand at the head of Glen Clova north of Kirriemuir. Walkhighlands says that to residents of Dundee Driesh is one of the best-known and most climbed Munros. The best way up is not the steep face above the glen but through Corrie Fee, which NatureScot describes as one of the best examples of a glacial corrie in the British Isles, a natural amphitheatre of cliffs; the reserve around it holds the most extensive stand of naturally established montane willow scrub in Scotland.

The walk starts at the Glen Doll car park, which has a ranger information post and toilets, and for the first stretch it shares the forest track with Jock’s Road, the old way over to Braemar. That road has a legal history. When the Scottish Rights of Way Society took Duncan Macpherson, then owner of Glen Doll, to the Court of Session over it, the society called 57 witnesses and won before Lord Kinnear; the Court of Session upheld the judgment on 6 July 1887, and the House of Lords rejected Macpherson’s appeal in May 1888, according to the society’s own account.

Beyond the deer fence at the reserve entrance the corrie opens out, and a built path climbs steeply left of the waterfall at the back. On the plateau the path to Mayar becomes informal and the ground between the summits is pathless moorland, where Walkhighlands points walkers to the line of fence posts. Driesh has a trig point and a large shelter cairn. Walkhighlands advises against the Scorrie ridge down from the summit, which it calls very steep and poorly defined; the safer way is to retrace to the col and take the Kilbo path down the Shank of Drumfollow into the forest.

Walkhighlands gives 14.5km with 835m of ascent in four and a half to five and a half hours, and no public transport to the start. It suits a walker with a first Munro behind them who can follow a compass bearing and fence line across a plateau. Anyone who wants a path underfoot throughout, or who is unsure of navigation when the cloud sits on the tops, is better served elsewhere; Ben Lawers has a built path all the way to its summit, and Lochnagar has clear tracks and mountain paths on a longer day.